How Apple's Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F - k-mcgrady http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/fashion/how-apples-siri-became-one-autistic-boys-bff.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> If you enjoyed this read you should watch the movie "Her" by Spike Jonze, as mentioned in the article. It hits quite heavily on the same theme (though more focused on romantic relationships with AI) and offers a pretty realistic glimpse of what this technology might look like in the next 20 years. Really enjoyed the movie.

On the same note, I was talking to someone a few days ago who was telling me about how many of her girlfriends use Tinder to essentially have virtual boyfriends. She explained that in many cases they meet guys via Tinder, move to text-messaging, and the relationship never progresses to in-person meetings. They simply love having someone on the other end of their phones to talk to. The knowledge that someone is there at almost all times seems to be comforting and addicting. Kinda crazy, but again this kind of thing is only going to become more and more common due to the fact that technology is in everyone's pocket from a young age now.

The question I ended the conversation with was something along the lines of, "Do you think they care that it's an actual human on the other end? Would they be ok with really convincing AI?"

Food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a great article that highlights some things people have been thinking about for a while (starting with Isaac Asimov), but haven't been much of an immediate concern until now: namely the nature of artificial intelligence and our relationship with it.

We could consider the emergence of a friendship like this a milestone, a bit like when chess AI got good enough to beat a typical club player, but wasn't quite ready to beat Kasparov. We're probably only a few years away (OK, maybe 10+, but it's not 50+) from the Kasparov point, where an AI like Siri can beat the turing test for any living human.

There are all sorts of questions like whether, to be considered alive and imbued with the inalienable rights that should come with sentience, is self- awareness necessary, or is the anthropomorphic perception of nearby humans more important? Should an AI have similar rights by proxy as a pet dog?

One especially important question is what does it mean for an AI to die? If Siri developed a fault, and fixing that fault would cause a change in personality so that it was no longer recognisable to Gus as his BFF, should that act be called "roboticide"? Such questions are particularly relevant when AI/ML systems (deep recurrent nets, for example) are so complex that we don't really understand them fully, so we have no way to surgically correct specific faults; all we can do is revert to an earlier state and re-train. That may be loss of life, for certain definitions of "life".

As an occasional game developer, I tend to think about these issues in other contexts too, such as our relationship with virtual characters in games. It's already very easy to get highly immersed in single-player virtual worlds, like any of the Elder Scrolls games. Most would not be fooled into thinking that an NPC is "alive", but it's certainly possible to develop emotional reactions to certain characters that we perhaps like because they say nice things about us, or dislike because we find then annoying, etc.

There are two kinds of character interaction a person can have in a game: NPCs and human avatars. As we start to build virtual worlds (partly spurred by the Oculus Rift and partly just because of the Internet), this could affect not only our relationship with NPCs, but with other humans too. I don't know whether this will a net positive or negative thing, but we're certainly going to learn a lot about human psychology as we head towards the point where, in VR, nobody knows you're a human.

<comment><USER3> When phones' personal assistants (every company seems to want to have theirs these days) become orders of magnitude more advanced, we may be able to tell them to "check on our vacation booking" and they will know to search through our emails and calendars and connect the dots, so in those tasks they will be more advanced. There will probably be more services tied more deeply into them- for example, you'll be able to say "get me an Uber" and they will reply with "A blue civic will be here in 3 minutes", or "fill up the fridge on Sunday morning" and an Instacart-like company will show up at your door Sunday morning with eggs, vegetables (but no milk because you didn't finish this week's).

However, we won't be able to have those deep meaningful conversations with our voice assistants, because they won't have the necessary life experience to follow meaningful conversations. The current products on the market have no parents, no age, no experiences in school, no previous job, no former lovers, etc (they will jump around those questions playfully, but the canned answers get old quite fast). Those trite details that we recount when we bond with people do not exist in current personal assistants and likely never will.

There are several reasons for this: the first being that being able to model a structure of "life experiences" that can be queried based on what the user is saying is an incredibly complex problem on which we have pretty much no angle of attack on.

 _12 year old child_ : "I got picked on at school today." _Digital personal assistant_ : "You know, it happened to me too when I was your age. Let's talk to your mom about it."

Or even more complex:

 _24 year old student_ : "Hey, remember that problem on the Trigonometry 402 final from my senior year that I asked you to solve the equations for back in college?" _Digital assistant_ : "Oh yes! Here it is."

This, happening for millions and millions of possible interactions, life experiences, contexts? That's the algorithmic equivalent of light speed travel. Who knows maybe we'll get here one day. But 10 years from now? 50 years from now? 100 years from now? Not a chance. Remember that 40 years ago, Minsky thought it'd take a bunch of grad students a summer to write a program that recognize objects in pictures.

The second reason that such systems are extremely unlikely to emerge is that even if it would be doable technically, it would be extremely expensive to a company. And there would be literally no demand for it, because the overwhelming majority of people don't care about talking to robots. They already don't have enough time to spend with their children, partners, friends, parents... why would anyone waste time with a fake person? No company would invest the billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, to solve this problem in the next few hundred years.

Those questions of sentience and whether powering off a digital voice is "killing it" are appealing to ask to those of us who grew up reading Isaac Asimov, because we want this future to exist so bad. But they are red herrings- those questions have no meaningful answers, because our society is not configured in a way in which those questions could actually arise. When you turn your phone off today, the personal assistant definitely doesn't "die"; and in 50 years, even if it can carry out tasks way more efficiently and give somewhat more "human sounding" answers to certain categories of questions, people will still have no problem turning it off.

<comment><USER4> > The second reason that such systems are extremely unlikely to emerge is that > even if it would be doable technically, it would be extremely expensive to a > company. And there would be literally no demand for it, because the > overwhelming majority of people don't care about talking to robots. They > already don't have enough time to spend with their children, partners, > friends, parents... why would anyone waste time with a fake person? No > company would invest the billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, > to solve this problem in the next few hundred years.

You've missed the point. Why would people watch a TV show and grow to love/hate characters, where there's no interaction between you and them, and all the lines, actions and scenes are scripted and rehearsed. They certainly don't have time to do it, and have children, partners, friends, parents. They would surely not binge watch, schedule time to watch new episodes come rain hail or shine or spend big bucks to visit filming locations etc.

Companies will invest stupid amounts of money in AI that has human qualities. Take the TV Show example: the AI is the "show" and each day they get into entertaining or emotional circumstances that you can "catch up" about, joke about etc. Their charisma is highly engineered to be incredibly engaging and fun to talk to, so you keep coming back for more. Over time they become a "good friend" that you love talking to. They never rebuff you, snub you, have no time for you, make fun of you (too much, just enough to joke around and have some banter). But why do they keep telling you how great Pepsi's new flavours are??

<comment><USER5> Because the TV show has no bugs, no "I'm sorry, I didn't understand why you said, rephrase" in the middle of your rant against whatever, and creates the same experience for everyone who watches it, so that people can discuss amongst themselves.

<comment><USER6> Slightly OT, but I'd be tempted to argue TV Shows can and do have bugs; plot holes, bad acting, continuity errors et al. They can be quite jarring.

<comment><USER5> That's a good point. At least they have less bugs than Siri.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article reminded me of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where the protagonist receives a book that became her closest companion and mentor in her life.

<comment><USER5> I, for one, accept our teenager overlords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, what a piece! I am incredibly impressed with the range of responses that Siri has. I wonder just how many questions they've entered responses to. Certainly some stuff can be learned, but responding to requests to marriage is certainly written at some level by a human.

<comment><USER9> Almost certainly they special-case some inputs -- have you ever recited the Konami Code to Siri? What amazes me is sheer variety of questions that people ask Siri that s/he can now answer humorously. It wouldn't surprise me if they watch the number of queries (from actual users) that don't get an answer and/or fall back to Wolfram Alpha to see if there are any new ones that need special treatment.

That said, most of the information that Siri spits out was "written at some level by a human", such as the Wikipedia articles s/he quotes (by Wikipedia authors), or the flight information for planes overhead (by airline employees).

<comment><USER10> The flight information is powered by Wolfram Alpha which appears to source it from ADS-B data via (I assume) the FAA, so that actually is entirely automated.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance- broadcast)

<comment><USER11> I doubt it's from the FAA. ADS-B is trivial to monitor, there's lots of private individuals/groups grabbing this info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Siri is pretty useful as a conversation partner for foreign language. I had tried out the British and Scottish voices for kicks, settled on Aussie for quite awhile and then while playing with my wife's Japanese Siri realized it was actually excellent language practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> Siri does have a very friendly sounding voice. I've been using the Siri voice library (not the AI) in a classroom robot that help kids with autism engage with their therapy.

<comment><USER14> Is there any public information on what you're doing? I have a son who is not necessarily ASD (we don't know exactly what he is dealing with yet), but he has some similar symptoms to ASD and he _loves_ robots (we have three LEGO WeDo sets and we regularly build WeDo robots). I would love to hear or read more on how you're using robots with ASD children!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Holy shit, we live in the future!

<comment><USER16> We're definitely getting close. I wish Apple would take Siri to the next level. It should be easier to make corrections, for example.

I bought Dragon Dictate for my Mac a couple days ago just so I could try to do a little more with voice recognition. It'll be great to be able to program mainly with voice like in this video: [http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)

At the moment, I can simply say "open terminal, begin, rebuild, restart, push, pull, boom (combines pull, rebuild, restart). I'm just using simple shell aliases but I'll probably add shell functions.

<comment><USER17> I gather Yosemite brings Siri to OS X, which I expect will be an interesting evolution, especially once people start figuring out how to add new capabilities and integrations.

I saw Rudd's demo and have been tantalized by its possibilities ever since. More than the specific technologies in use, what really fascinated me was the way he invented what could almost be described as a shorthand language optimized for efficiently driving the editor via voice, with various unique (and otherwise meaningless) phoneme combinations to represent things not easily expressed in ordinary English -- for example, "lep" instead of "left parenthesis", one syllable in place of five. That's the real win, I think; the specific dictation pipeline in use hardly matters, so long as it supports the necessary interfaces and customization capabilities.

Some day I mean to find the time for a really deep dive into the subject, ideally one from which I'll surface with something I can distribute to others wishing to drive their editors the same way.

<comment><USER18> >I gather Yosemite brings Siri to OS X,

It's been around for a few versions.

<comment><USER19> Uh, what? Siri is not available on OS X at all.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I was thinking of Siri's voice-to-text dictation. That's 99% of what I use Siri for. But yeah, you can't get the other stuff on mac yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fascinatingly, I tried asking Siri "Siri, will you mary me?" and her response was:

"I sure have received a lot of marriage proposals recently!"

For the first time, I was genuinely impressed with Siri's pseudo- intelligence/wit.

(Can we assume someone on the Siri team at Apple read this article?)

<comment><USER5> That "marry me" special case was in the news just after it was launched, it's not pseudo-intelligance at all, just the wit of Apple employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One really interesting idea related to the passing of the Turing test and formation of relationships between humans and AIs:

Our relationships with other humans have become increasingly digital, progressing from face to face communication to letters to the telephone to text / facebook / other social messages. Each step in this progression lowers the bar drastically for AI to start fulfilling peoples' social needs. We can now maintain or even establish a relationship with another human solely using text-based messaging, and I believe that soon we will reach the point where AIs can get 90% of the way there. I don't know when it will happen but I wouldn't bet against it.

<comment><USER22> This has been true since forever. In the 1960s, the chatbot ELIZA got people to talk to it for hours. To the point it's creator was deeply disturbed and began to advocate against AI.

As time goes on, the AI effect kicks in. People get used to AIs and it takes more and more to impress or fooled by them. Once we get real human level AI, I expect people will treat them like they do in bad sci fi movies (for the probably short period of time they are our equals.) Just like people treat slaves and lower classes in other societies, not something you would form a relationship with.

But really we are nowhere near that point. Chatbots have gotten really advanced, but they are still basically chatbots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This piece is absolutely adorable.

<comment><USER24> As a parent of an autistic child, I found this article very disturbing.

I have spent the last several years working with my child: to engage people and to establish empathy (among other skills) - empathy with real people. My child exhibits obsession with topics and we cover this using the Internet and other resources (eg. books, magazines). However, I have worked hard so that my child can relate to others and to learn essential skills to cope with life. My young autistic child has gone from avoiding eye contact, hitting and punching and general "fuck you if I don't like the look of you" to somewhat synthetic behaviour that's been learned - it now comes across as fairly natural... but it's been a lot of work. This was achieved by focussing on real people, both with similar issues and those without. It also came through honest and open communication about autism and autistics vs Neuro Typicals (NT).

Interestingly, my autistic child used siri briefly and poked holes through the AI and found it severely limiting.

As a parent of an autistic child that has read text-books, worked in class, spoken at length with specialists, attended support groups and training programs, and supported my child's turn-around that fellow parents/teachers/specialists described as "amazing" etc... I am horrified at an approach that diverges from constructive social behaviour. The younger you learn to engage others, the easier it is and more readily it will stick.

I'd encourage any parent of an autistic child to research this area thoroughly before going down the "Siri as BFF" path.

<comment><USER25> The OP said interacting with Siri, far from causing her son to diverge from constructive social behavior, helped him learn it - he ended up being better able to interact with real people. I have no particular reason to believe her son's experience was atypical. Do you have any reason to believe it was?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Btw, I noticed that Yosemite has slightly enhanced its dictation tool for use with Automater. Might come in handy.

[http://www.macworld.com/article/2834532/ok-mac-using- automat...](http://www.macworld.com/article/2834532/ok-mac-using-automators- dictation-commands-new-in-yosemite.html#tk.rss_all)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone get the "Are there any flights me?" query to work? It just keeps doing a Bing search showing pages talking about the fact that Siri can do it.

Wolfram Alpha can answer the question if I got to the site, so the data is definitely there.

<comment><USER27> It used to work, but right now it's not, for some reason.

If you start any query with "Wolfram" it will send the rest to Wolfram Alpha verbatim, but "wolfram flights overhead" isn't working either.

It works directly on WA though: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=flights+overhead](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=flights+overhead)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This story should be an inspiration for the 21-st century version of the "Little Prince" st. Expury.

<comment><USER29> The Little Prince was about friendship between creatures that need each other. That's actually one of the main ideas of the book: we need each other. From my experience developing a Robin (a product not unlike Siri), I can tell you: yes, some users really adopt the machine as a pet to an extreme degree, but I don't envy these people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've never used Android's voice recognition – does it have similar scripted responses?

<comment><USER31> No. The Google voice recognition stuff does not have a personality or try to be a character. This was an explicit design decision, I believe, made early on. They are going for a "you are asking Google and the answer is spoken with the voice of Google", presumably, people are more tolerant of mistakes the less human-like a machine tries to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This has some relevance to a product I've been working on for a little while: [https://www.getpuzzlepiece.com](https://www.getpuzzlepiece.com). It's an Android tablet and apps specifically for kids with Autism. (Coming soon to iOS.)

</comment><comment><USER33> I enjoyed this piece, but the middle section about the author and "Should I call Richard" seemed entirely out of place. It did not match the tone of the story and did not sound genuine.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's something in my eye, and it's leaking.

</comment><comment><USER35> +1 for friendly AI (even with its narrowness)</comment>


Ask HN: Multiplayer, web-based, arcade games like slither.io - <AUTHOR> Interested to find out if anyone else has launched any games in a similar vein, in the over two and half years since slither.io launched.
That is, games with:

  - Arcade style graphics
  - Multiplayer (10+, even 100+)
  - Web-based
  - Nearly one click to start playing
 <comment><USER2> I still think generals.io is one of the best. There remain significant technical challenges to making HTML5 games at web scale. Making sure actual humans, not bots, are playing is of primary importance. Then there are the actual economics. Cloud traffic can become expensive even at <1000 concurrent players. Majority of revenue will be ad-based. There is demand for great browser based games. Even in LAN configuration. It's a question of who can invest in the web. And who can design specifically for the medium. With the result possibly looking quite different than 60fps arcade style games. Best of luck ;)</comment>


Cubic Map Algebra Functions for Spatio-Temporal Analysis [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://caee.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/giswr2009/Li/Paper1.pdf <comment><USER2> Jeez. Written in IDL. An interesting paper but makes you wonder why they use such ancient tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone help explain this?

<comment><USER4> If you're in domain of, say, weather forecasting. You need a model correlating a number of variables both spatially and temporary. Spatial data is kind of hard to work with, and apparently common approaches hasn't incorporated time very well, focusing mostly on problems related to problems of space, so they improved it.

Example of a problem, you have a set of sensors at various geographical locations. At some points between sensors you need to forecast a measure, say temperature. Even just interpolating a current value can be challenging, forecasting in time doesn't make it easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (2005)</comment>


Ask HN: Privacy Resources Recommendations? - <AUTHOR> Hey there,
I am looking into using more secure & private software.
Sources that recommend or audit different software are high appreciated! Also high-level guides about the subject would be very helpful as well.
I am already going through privacytools.io, other recommendations are welcome!
Cheers! <comment><USER2> [https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/](https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/) \- for discussion

[https://ethical.net/](https://ethical.net/) \- also cool list

[https://github.com/KevinColemanInc/awesome- privacy](https://github.com/KevinColemanInc/awesome-privacy) \- another list

[https://ssd.eff.org/](https://ssd.eff.org/) \- eff surveliance self defense guide

In short use:

        * Tor Browser or Firefox + ublockorigin + noscript OR umatrix

        * duckduckgo for search, duck.com shor url, also look into bangs ! for ddg

        * Signal for private messaging

<comment><USER3> Pirvacy Tools also has their own subreddit: [https://old.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsio](https://old.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsio)

I also highly recommend self-hosting: [https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted](https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted)</comment></comment>


How Does Java Both Optimize Hot Loops and Allow Debugging - <AUTHOR> http://www.cliffc.org/blog/2015/02/22/how-does-java-both-optimize-hot-loops-and-allow-debugging/ <comment><USER2> I wrote about a similar topic, but in the context of Ruby rather than Java if people find understanding that easier [http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/deoptimizing/](http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/deoptimizing/)

</comment><comment><USER3> So to take the example from the article, if your optimising compiler unrolls the loop so there are four loop iterations per jump, and i is incrementing 0, 4, 8, 12... if you set a conditional breakpoint on i=10, how does it work out that it needs to break at the earlier safepoint (when i=8) and switch to the non-optimised code?

<comment><USER4> I don't think that needs to happen. From the article:

"Basically, we re-enter a clone of the loop from above…. a clone specially made to be re-entered at any iteration"

This is put forward as the explanation for how variables are mutated in the debugger, but as a mechanism for "un-unrolling" the loop it probably serves to support such conditional breakpoints too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a problem with the html escape codes in the sample programs. It shows:

        for( int i=0; i<N; i++ )
          sum += A[i]  // set a breakpoint here, for "i>1e6" or maybe "i>1e7"</comment>


Facebook monitors and tracks the locations of users it deems a threat - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18225373/facebook-threat-users-tracking-monitors-employees <comment><USER2> Kind of buried until the end is the fact that FB also apparently tracks the location of its employees. The story of tracking the interns and determining they weren't "working from home" doesn't hold up as written - what was the predicate cause of concern for their safety?</comment>


14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s - <AUTHOR> http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20140710/NEWS/307100049/14-000-draft-notices-sent-men-born-1800s

<comment><USER2>
        A clerk working with the state's database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997

Wait so.. The US is drafting?

<comment><USER3> Right. It's essentially a ceremonial piece of paperwork, dating from a more militarized time (USSR etc) when un-computerized governments didn't have many other ways to keep track of its citizens. Nowadays, no human being _really_ cares if you register anymore, because there's no draft, and if there ever needed to be, they could require registration again and track down the delinquents using computers.

So it'll probably be required forever. Wikipedia says the agency gets $24 million a year.

<comment><USER4> There are some consequences for not registering (can't get federal government jobs, can't get federal student aid) so it's not quite true that no one cares.

<comment><USER3> Well, yes, the bureaucracy _always_ cares. But I said human beings. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't know America maintains a register of men they could potentially conscript should the need arise.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System)

</comment><comment><USER6> _" The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly 400,000 records to the Selective Service. A clerk working with the state's database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 — and for those born a century earlier, PennDOT spokeswoman Jan McKnight said Thursday. ...

The Selective Service didn't initially catch it because the state used a two- digit code to indicate year of birth, spokesman Pat Schuback said."_

So apparently they store their year field as two digits and have a separate field for century, instead of expanding the year field to four digits? Looks like their shoddy programming finally came back to bite them.

Maybe in 2016, when people born in 2000 start applying for drivers licenses, they'll be rejecting them, saying that 116-year-olds are too old to drive safely?

<comment><USER7> That is what we call a y2k bug

<comment><USER8> Century field? In all likelihood, this is actually a _repair_ to a y2k bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gov tech is always fun. I just remember when I had to do it I tried to register sometime late at night (2am-ish?) and was surprised to see that their system had crazy amounts of planned downtime per week. It took a few days before I remembered to do it when it was accepting registrations.

Found wayback link: It is not operational when system maintenance is scheduled from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. U.S. Central Time Tuesday through Saturday and from 6 p.m. Wednesday to 2 a.m. Thursday.

([https://web.archive.org/web/20011101001831/http://www4.sss.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011101001831/http://www4.sss.gov/regver/reg_server_down.asp))

<comment><USER10> At first glance, I'm gobsmacked at the idea of an electronic system that hovers around 90% planned uptime, but then again, of all the services I might wish to demonstrate a total lack of efficiency, the selective service would probably be my first choice.

Even now, to look at the website, it seems like it might be running on some server dating back to covered wagon times. Here's to hoping it stays that way.

<comment><USER11> Slightly related, but Companies House, the UK's official registry of incorporated businesses, used to close up the database search function on its website every day at, ISTR, 5:30pm, then open it again the next morning. This would have been in the late 90s/early 2000s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's getting closer and closer to 2038, the 32-bit time_t overflow... I'd figure by now more bugs would be found with that event than Y2K bugs 14.5 years after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER13> Two odd things about this story 1)That nobody noticed what I have to assume was a significantly larger number of selective service notices for the state of Pennsylvania being sent and 2) That any of them got actually delivered to anyone who could even respond to it. My great-grandfather fits the criteria - born in PA in the late 1800's - but he's been deceased for _decades_ and had at least four separate addresses as an adult - none of which are places where family members live today.

</comment><comment><USER14>
        The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania
        Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly
        400,000 records to the Selective Service

No drivers license, no problems.

<comment><USER15> More like No ID, no problems.

Except no ID is its own problem.

<comment><USER14> from experience, this isnt true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is a pity they didn't show. Perhaps they need louder trumpets.

</comment><comment><USER17> Silly Selective Service. You need the stone of Erech, and to be the heir of Isildur, to summon the army of the dead.</comment>


Apple's stick in the mud routine is getting old - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/23/apples-stick-in-the-mud-routine-is-getting-old/

<comment><USER2> Heh, the author of this article may be exaggerating a bit.

The carrier sim can block access to the apn/mms settings; an AT&T sim usually does.

I've used the sim-swap trick (with a t-mobile sim) on my iPhone 4S to change the apn without issue... On iOS 5 and iOS 6. And I know of at least four others that are on StraightTalk using iOS 6. Guess my anecdotal evidence is greater than the authors.

<comment><USER3> Except when you buy an explicitly unlocked phone, you expect to be able to use different SIM cards, and some carrier SIM cards don't work in the unlocked phone because you can't set the MVNO setting in iOS 6.x (you could prior to that)

My guess is that its just a 'bug' and it only affects a 'minority' of the users, so its not on the stop ship list. But I have no insights into Apple or their process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why should anyone have to set this themseleves anyway? I thought carriers pushed these settings through some kind of magic "carrier settings" text message? I don't understand why his carrier can't sort this out for him? I'm pretty sure they can change the APN remotely because I found a way to tether my laptop to my sony erricson way back when it had unlimited data (because WAP was so crap that no-one used much data). My memory may be wrong but I think they changed the APN for WAP access to one which actually had a password by sending out one of these, then shut off the APN people were using for surfing the web on their laptops through a tethered phone.

<comment><USER5> Because that doesn't work on the iPhone. iOS has those settings baked in.

I ditched my iPhone when I got tired of my tethering options randomly disappearing/reappearing on minor iOS updates without a chance to override that. Even though my carrier allowed and supported tethering, the options would just disappear because the APN settings for the carrier were not present in the phone and couldn't be uploaded on some iOS versions.

Somehow Android "just worked". Figure that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is incorrect. I've used a 3GS with iOS 6 up until recently when I picked up my nexus 4 and I use a MVNO. I've been on straight talk for quite some time and have had no issues. I've used this site unlockit.co.nz and downloaded the profile to make the changes. To my knowledges these are just files you could create with the desired APN settings and host up on your own personal computer via nginx or apache and browse internally to download/install.

To create a straight talk APN profile on my nexus 4 I needed to have a sim card installed in the phone. For some odd reason Android OS does not allow one to access the APN settings area without a sim card in the phone.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is probably not a Apple thing, but a carrier thing saying if you buy a phone from me it's locked to me so no APN for you.

I have full access to those options, but someone else I know on a different carrier does not.

</comment><comment><USER8> iPhone APN settings can be modified using the iPhone Configuration Utility.[0] In fact, T-Mobile provides an easy-to-download, easy-to-install "profile" (a file specifying the APN) created with this tool.

<http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1465>

<comment><USER9> The configuration profiles are even easier to use then editing the information on the device itself.

The only problem is that end-users might not be aware of it and I am not sure what the answer from the Geniuses might be.

<comment><USER10> There is nothing to stop the service provider from offering a profile on their website. With a short URL the costumer could set it up right from the store using the wifi connection and 2 taps. These profiles can even be signed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm in the US on AT&T locked and have full access to my APN settings

<comment><USER12> Honestly, this is somewhat odd/surprising since AT&T has been known not to allow access to the APN settings, as opposed to T-mobile for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> hmm ... I still have full access to the APN settings ( Unlocked iPhone 4s from the US, German carrier). Is this just a problem in the US? I guess it depends on the carrier doesn't it?

<comment><USER14> Me too. This is with a Chinese iPhone in Europe.

I noticed that my carrier settings get erased on OS upgrades, though, which is annoying.

<comment><USER15> Me three. I've got a new (bought on friday unlocked from an apple shop) iPhone 5 and I've used the magic text message to change the APN settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just not true. The settings are still there and were in the iOS6 betas as well. I know because I would have been affected.

Even if the settings were gone from the UI it would still be possible to set them with profiles, which can be distributed via the operators website.

Some "advanced" settings that could only be set with profiles have even moved into the UI in later versions of iOS, like Cisco VPN, S/MIME.

</comment><comment><USER12> This post is extremely bad and is just a rehash of the original post by Nathan Anderson with added misunderstandings, errors and drama.</comment>


Gilead's coronavirus treatment to cost $3,120 for U.S. insured patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/gileads-coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir-to-cost-3120-for-us-insured-patients.html <comment><USER2> Trump should use the defense production act to force them to make the drug for cost, similar to how companies were ordered to make ventilators.</comment>


Which crypto should I buy? How do you spot a crypto scam? (Explain Like I'm 5) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robinbloor/which-crypto-should-i-buy-how-do-you-spot-a-crypto-scam-explain-like-im-5-e6fd6b1b798e <comment><USER2> > Which crypto should I buy?

RSA and AES are good choices, but you shouldn't have to buy and implementation, as there are several good open source ones available for free.

> How do you spot a crypto scam?

One important clue: is the crypto algorithm being kept secret? Good cypto should rely on the key for security, if the algorithm is not available for inspection, it's likely weak.

There's a saying: "never roll your own crypto." Creating cypto is _very hard_ , so unless you have the relevant skill and expertise, what you make will likely have fatal flaws.

<comment><USER3> I think you misinterpreted the question. It's about cryptocurrencies, not about cryptographic algorithms.

<comment><USER2> > I think you misinterpreted the question. It's about cryptocurrencies, not > about cryptographic algorithms.

I knew that. I was just having fun with the misappropriation of the term "crypto."</comment></comment></comment>


How Corrupted Language Moved from Campus to the Real World - <AUTHOR> http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/02/how_corrupted_language_moved_f.html

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I went to school at UC Berkeley in 2001 and my impression was that the school that spawned the free speech movement had in many ways morphed into a school that limited speech the most, much in the way the author suggests. However, while the "official" speech channels were heavily censored there was always a very active underground channel that had no censoring whatsoever.

The speed of updates on the internet is making those underground channels more difficult to suppress (as people note about things like the recent protests in Iran) so the threat from powerful bureaucracies like the government and academia on the free-flow of information is likely decreasing.

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding of justice systems in general was that this kind of thing is the status quo. Anyone who has ever been disciplined in high school or college should be aware of such things. The severity of your punishment depends on how "nice" the people doing the punishing are and not on the severity of your crime.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had never the story that Arthur Anderson was prosecuted with trumped-up charges. Is the author's account accurate?

<comment><USER5> Arthur Andersen was convicted in the summer of 2002 for having obstructed justice by shredding Enron documents. See sample article from that period: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2047122.stm>.

The author's point, I think, is that the _vagueness_ in the law is what is unjust, not the idea that prosecutors make up the laws as they go. In other words, the laws give prosecutors shall vast discretion that they can be applied in ways that are unfair and even ruinous to companies such as to deny them basic due process protections (and, of course, the Andersen conviction was ultimately overturned).

More broadly stated, when language is corrupted so that nothing is clear, everyone acts potentially at his peril because legal outcomes - that is, _punitive_ legal outcomes that can harm or destroy lives - rest on the whim of enforcement authorities who have broad powers to punish based on vague criteria affording no checks on their power to abuse their discretion. This is how the author lumps college speech codes with Justice Department abuses and ties it all back to Orwell's famous piece on language and its uses and abuses. It is actually a well-written piece, certainly so from a lawyer perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The direction seems backwards to me. Vague criminal laws have had the purpose and effect he describes for _centuries_. Before the current crop of vague criminal laws, people used to be brought up on charges like "tending to undermine the public morals".

</comment><comment><USER7> I would have been in such deep shit at an american college.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's next: an article about the War on Christmas (TM) by Bill O'Reilly?</comment>


How One Employer Stuck a New Mom with a $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-one-employer-stuck-a-new-mom-with-a-bill-for-her-premature-baby <comment><USER2> The difference with government care is that you won't get a bill..but you may not get coverage either.</comment>


Ask HN: Compensation at a firm with a cash cow - <AUTHOR> I work at a firm that has one product that is a very reliable cash cow.  It is a small company so lets say the top half of the developers ( 15 out of 30 ) make a market rate salary and then a bonus of anywhere from $300k to $1 million for working on the cash cow.  In a company like that how do you get some of those existing highly paid developers to work on a much more risky project?
It seems the options are: (1) Continue to pay them something close to what they are making even though they no longer work on the cash cow and until the next project makes money, which might be years if ever. (2) Try to get them to take a deal where they will get a percent of the profits of the new project which should be more than what they are currently making.  Of course there is a chance the project won't ever make money so do you take the pretty much sure thing $500k bonus or do you take a chance on making $5 million/year on this thing that may or may not happen.  $5 million/year is probably at the upper bounds of what is possible, it could be $10 million or maybe even $20 million but any more than that would really be dreaming.  That is the whole point, it is risky in that the outcome is very much unknown. (3) Have them continue to work on the new project but also do some work on the cash cow so that they get some bonus from the cash cow but they are working on the new thing as well.  The problem with this is that for the new project to succeed it will probably take complete focus, dedication and passion from the team involved so splitting time like that will probably doom the project from the start. (4) Force them to take some one of the above.
It isn't really possible to set up milestones.  The only relevant milestone is whether or not the new project is making any money, everything else is meaningless. <comment><USER2> I am curious where you work; is it in finance?

I'm not sure I believe you when you say "there are no relevant milestones". From a business stand point it doesn't matter what technical milestones are hit, but almost every business in the world tries to determine if employees are doing as well as expected or better and there is often no clear link to the exact monetary value of any given dev work. There are obviously issues here, but I find it hard to believe any compensation structure exists that doesn't, if nothing else but because teamwork is hard to quantify.

If this project isn't expected to take more than a year to get off the ground, it doesn't sound significantly different from just having a very uncertain bonus.

In any case, if _you_ have no preference in how they should be compensated, consider letting them decide how they would like to be compensated; in a bonus driven culture people may be quite happy to take a percentage they think is reasonable, or they may want to keep their existing structure.

If these developers are able to command such a salary elsewhere, I doubt you will have much luck getting them to take a salary structure they dislike simply because the stakes are so high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is finance! Prop trading more specifically.

We could set up milestones such as (1) implement this exchange interface with this latency or (2) implement this trading algo with this latency but really none of that matters if you don't make money in the end. In fact you don't want people to focus too much on that. You don't really know what is important. Maybe latency really isn't very important. Maybe it is the most important factor.

I like the idea of letting them choose but my point is that they will choose to stay where they are unless you say that they can have their current compensation but then saying you get the same bonus you got last year regardless of how this new project works out defeats the incentive nature of having a bonus. Of course they would take that deal as they get the same amount as they would and there is some chance it will work out and they get more.

<comment><USER2> Some people are just completely risk intolerant, but if you can't convince anyone at your company to take a risk on something that could next them 10X their comp, then it seems more likely that they just don't think your idea will work.

One thing to consider is that you might not want the best of the best; their talents may be better utilised ekeing out small but highly leveraged gains on your cash cow. You may be better off with someone who isn't that great, but who can ask the more experienced devs for help.

Also consider that bonuses are not the only way to motivate people, most other industries manage to motivate people just fine without a huge sums.

Alternatively, if your goal is just to motivate people rather than conserve cash, let them get both; let them take the maximum of last year's bonus, or a cut of the new project; if they manage to make the new project work they do even better, if not the company eats the risk.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources to write cleaner code - <AUTHOR>

I just came to know about Clean Code by Uncle Bob Martin. This book is so good that I realize all my current code smells. What are the resources you recommend to write better code? <comment><USER2> I wish I had the time to write cleaner code at work - the company ethos is to strive for progress and not perfection, as that could come later... Buncha nitwits. At least there's the open source community, who tend to follow style guides in their respective programming languages. I tend to follow those guides if I contribute to that project, and reading up on the different style guides for the same language has given me a decent perspective on what is generally expected. Following those is a good way to write clear, concise code. I also tend to try to explain the code I'm writing in the actual code without needing comments (I still do comment code though), so any function/variable/property names are verbose in that respect. My usual goal for this is to make the code clear enough to be understandable if it had no comments at all, but add comments in anyway to elaborate on what is happening.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are a Python developer, have a look at this video [http://pyvideo.org/video/1780/transforming-code-into- beautif...](http://pyvideo.org/video/1780/transforming-code-into-beautiful- idiomatic-pytho)

Also, you can check the Google Python Style Guide:

[http://code.google.com/p/soc/wiki/PythonStyleGuide](http://code.google.com/p/soc/wiki/PythonStyleGuide)

[http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.ht...](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.html)</comment>


The mosquito-repelling activity of sweetgrass - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33984044

<comment><USER2> If only the article had mentioned the Latin name of the plant. Wikipedia gives four possibilities: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_grass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_grass)

<comment><USER3> Hierochloe odorata

<comment><USER4> There is a lot of plants with coumarin in fact, not ony weeds.

<comment><USER3> Good to know, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdotes are not data, of course, but my mosquito bite-riddled hide begged to differ with my grandmother's (and apparently, some scientists') belief that Avon's "Skin So Soft" worked as insect repellent back in the 1990s.

<comment><USER6> I just returned from a vacation in florida.

I can tell you that skin-so-soft definitely works against no-see-ums (or midges). It doesnt seem to have any effect at all on mosquitos.

I sprayed the oil on a table covered in both mosquitos and no-see-ums. the mosquitos flew away and the no-see-ums all died right where they were.

<comment><USER7> 'flew away' is working, for some values of 'working'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.prairiemoon.com/seeds/grasses-sedges- rushes/hier...](https://www.prairiemoon.com/seeds/grasses-sedges- rushes/hierochloe-odorata-sweet-grass.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I know a young man, camped with him 100 times (Boy Scouts), who _does not get bit by mosquitoes_. Think about that. If he could bottle whatever it is, he would be a billionaire.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the same vein: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20836800](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20836800)

Geraniol, linalool, and citronella compared (candles and diffusers, albeit indoors). Geraniol appeared most effective.

More by many of the same researchers: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20836800](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20836800)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm very hopeful some of these safe Deet alternatives become products. If you need a mosquito repellent, stand next to me and you won't get a single bite (my family is very appreciative).

</comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia tells me that coumarin is only a precursor to coumadin, and is not, therefore, a well-known rat poison and anticoagulant.

I hope WP is right.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's good to be developing chemicals better than Deet, considering most Dermatologists would never use the stuff.</comment>


A Man Trying to Make Sense of Brexit Is Tired and Would Like to Stop Now - ezequiel-garzon https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/world/europe/brexit-flowchart-confusion.html <comment> ezequiel-garzon Jon Worth Euroblog: [https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow- diagrams/](https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow-diagrams/)</comment>


Show HN: Rate our startup, Distala  - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, we recently launched https://www.distala.com/ and are looking to gauge interest from the HN community. Feedbacks are all welcome !
Distala.com provides a full web remote desktop control or screen sharing.
It allows one shot sessions to provide assistance to your folks or a resident software to install on computers to get access whenever you want.
Feel free to test our service: as early adopters you would be helping us a lot since it's our first launch ! <comment><USER2> Hi all, I'll add few details about Distala, and AMP Online Support the underlying API. We have started this project about 2 years ago, we had made other things around it but stopped their development to focus on the screen- sharing and remote control aspect, and its API. So as said, every thing works with the AMP Online Support API, it is fully REST, and will soon be released for other developers. We are currently expanding the API to the client-side (JS API), to make a cleaner client interface with Javascript text chat and Flash video/audio chat. Everything will be customizable.

Distala appeared lately (around February), to give a complete example of a typical API's implementation. And is finally a complete service.

For the technologies used: We mostly used Java (with pieces of C++ for JNI). We have a cloud-based relay system that enables efficient scalability, all over the world. Installers are generated with Install4J (a really great tool). And distala is a PHP/JS/MySQL website.

The professional version isn't out right now, but will soon be available.

Thx all

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable - <https://www.distala.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this better than- or different from- LogMeIn's <http://join.me> and Citrix's what's-its-name service? The space is already well crowded, so what is it that you do better than other guys?

<comment><USER2> Hi eps,

Join.me is quite close to our technologies, but is just a way to get someone to gain control over your PC, which is clearly not what we are doing. Trust me, if you try to do remote support with this, your customer won't be able to launch anything... TeamViewer works quite the same way, you have to take your customer to a link where he downloads and launches a program, and then transmits you a code..., but that's just too much for most computer users oO ! Citrix gotoassist (you talk about this one, right ?) isn't free...

What we offer is a real service for free: instant installation-less remote support software (by mail, link, or code), that doesn't require any manipulation (or very few) from the customer. And remote access to your home computer with the resident software. And a video/audio/chat feature that is not here yet.

What we sell is a professional way of using it. Our customer can create a team, have multiple permanent rooms that they can share with each other, widgets to manage their permanent rooms to add on their Website, high number of resident software, statistics, callback features: your website is told when a session has started and stopped, enabling automatic billing.

All this for 9.90Euros/users/months, which is way cheaper than any other...

Behind all this we have an API called AMP Online Support, enabling to reproduce all these functionalities in any other tools. The API is bi- directional, calls are made to the API to create sessions, and the API can make calls back to the implementation, to tell what is going on, new connection, start/end of session, etc...

And of course, mobile device apps will very soon be available.</comment></comment>


Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, JC Penney into Fulfillment Ctrs - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and-giant-mall-operator-look-at-turning-sears-j-c-penney-stores-into-fulfillment-centers-11596992863 <comment><USER2> Finally some useful ideas what we do with empty shopping centers if the majority of people buys online.</comment>


Clear Channel's billboards will start tracking consumers in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/10/21361734/clear-channel-billboards-privacy-ad-tracking-europe <comment><USER2> I did some work as a consultant for a big outdoor publisher and this has been a problem they've been attempting to solve for a decade or more.

This kind of physical, outdoor advertising has been hemorrhaging dollars to online ads for decades for several reasons but a big one is online having a much better (but far from perfect) attribution story. Attribution is the big, thorny problem in _all_ of advertising e.g. how do you know if Customer A saw Ad B and that they then went on to buy Product C.

In my experience this type of tech has two goals:

The first is measuring distribution with aggregate data about how many people saw the ad and when, then combining this with ethnographic data about the location (e.g. what proportion of people in this area fall into income bracket Y). This looks like "1,293 people have seen your ad in the last 60 minutes and here some demographic information about them". This is done with video and gait tracking, or radar/lidar for measuring volumes and people who 'engage' with the ad by lookijng at it for >N $TIME.

This is all perfectly possible and scalable and is what ClearChannel are currently doing, the product trick is to make it 'real-time' so advertisers can adjust their buys and unit distribution more flexibly when combined with digital signage (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today). This also nicely ups outdoor spend (people use it more, it appears more sticky) but they also charge more for these more 'dynamic' outdoor units. There's a bunch of seriously dubious data the the publishers use to justify this new way of buying outdoor.

The second (and WAY worse one) is doing direct attribution (e.g. Did consumer sKIFW3890 see ad sdoflij0934r and then did they buy product 029w3r29 from merchant 203ei2-309ir). This has been the holy grail of outdoor for a decade but no one's been able to make it work. ClearChannel very clearly WANT to do it, which is creepy as all hell, but in my reading between the lines (and working in the industry a little) I don't _think_ this is what their Radar solution delivers, at the moment. I could be wrong, though.

<comment><USER3> >> (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today).

That's not the goal. The goal is to turn outdoor billboards into online ad bars. The goal is to micro-target whales, those with lots to spend and who are most susceptible to ads. When such an individual walks down a street they will see billboards targeting them specifically. Everyone will know when the latest tech millionaire steps of the BART. All the billboards will switch from Honda to Bugatii.

Personally, I'm not wealthy. But when I drive down the road I don't want to see the same stupid ads I see online. (At work. At home I use adblockers and never see ads.) None of the ads are relevant to me in any way. I am not looking for a retirement home, nor am I having trouble with my colon. And I definitely do not want to see incontinence products on every billboard.

<comment><USER2> It's easy to draw comparisons between online/digital units and outdoor, they share a lot, but the fundamental difference is that digital/online is one-to- one (one ad, one user, can be personalised) and outdoor is one to many. Right now, there's no technology available that will change that. Some people think if AR becomes ubiquitous it might, but that's still fantasyland.

Because of that, again right now, it's a misnomer that outdoor want to do the Bladerunner style microtargeting of large outdoor display (the Bugatti example you gave) simply because you make MUCH less money showing an ad to 100's of people to target one person than showing a _better_ ad to the 100's. This is because the outdoor market is still fundamentally based on CPM not CPA; that _might_ change, but in my experience it's not likely.

<comment><USER3> I'm not so sure about those numbers. Putting something directly in Bill Gate's eyeline is worth more than a thousand pleb eyeballs. If a billboard company can say "For the next three seconds, Whale#3 is staring at billboard#67" they can sell those seconds for many hundreds of dollars.

But I wouldn't limit it to the wealthy. Advertisers know that at particular points in life _everyone_ become susceptible to ads. The young couple who just discovered they are pregnant: big spending on new products asap. The junior executive who just got a big promotion: new car time. The soldier who just got leave: hotels. The guy who just inherited a house from a dead relative: estate agents. I think most advertisers would forgo the attention of the regular commuters if they can target the one individual on the train who is primed to react to a specific type of ad.

My nightmare is the rise of so-called anti-ads, individually-targeted ads so horrible that users will pay to make them not appear. There are ads on television that cause people to change the channel. (The crying puppy ads, the borderline-obscene erectile dysfunction stuff.) Now imagine you cannot escape. That ad follows you around all day. How bad must it become before you will pay to make it stop? Bladerunner wasn't _that_ bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So is the claim here that even though they dont know me at a personal level, they know me as "shopper_1092716718" and can target me whenever they want?

If so, another fantastic example of expensive and complex regulation being gamed by the big players while the smaller entities are left with the cost.

<comment><USER5> In Oslo a while back there was a faulty billboard that started outputting all its log data to its main screen.

It was essentially tracking everyone who passed it by characteristics like gender, if they had glasses, where they were looking.

But yeah, every person was just an entry. There was no way for it to know who that person was.

I wish I could find the story but my google-fu isn't helping.

<comment><USER6> [https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard- used-f...](https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-facial- recognition-tech-to-show-women-ads-for-salad)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It befuddles me to see that there so little pushback against the use of these types of tech.

We can't trust advertisers to limit themselves. They are only limited by what current technology can achieve but the goal posts keep moving and so is their appetite for more intrusive ways to gather data.

There is a strong competitive incentive for them to build a system capable of proving that a specific consumer seeing a specific ad ended up in a specific sale. Imagine how much value that information could have to a company wanting to sell its products! Near-guaranteed sales, ad expenses laser-targetted to those who will actually buy! A boon for both advertisers and sellers!

Advertisers gather and cross-reference public information, credit information, track people tastes, political affiliations, phone location, where they go, what they look at... all to present consumers with hyper targeted adverts that result in more sales. The more detailed and precise the data, the more targeted the ad and the higher the chances of persuading a customer to part with their money. Removing uncertainty is the goal.

I sincerely hope that these overreaching applications of what is basically surveillance tech meet stronger resistance. Legal challenges are best, but some old-fashioned 'guerilla' tactics may also be effective... I wouldn't be sorry for companies like Clear Channel either way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know what kind of data they get and how they get it? Is it through bluetooth? Wifi? NFC? Something else?

That's obviously something I would want to "adblock".

<comment><USER9> It seems (in the US at least) they purchase the data directly from cellular service providers: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/02/29/468598100...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/02/29/468598100/using-billboards-company-will-collect-personal- information-to-help-advertisers)

<comment><USER8> Thanks. So if they did something similar in EU, it means they must have such deal with some providers.

I can't wait to have their names, I certainly will change provider if mine has anything to do with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope everyone involved in that company spills their drinks and drops their toast. buttered side down.

</comment><comment><USER11> One more tool for corporations to better manipulate consumers will surely improve the world, and not the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER12> So how exactly are they tracking people? wifi/bluetooth? facial/gait recognition?

<comment><USER13> A clear channel billboard (roughly phonebooth size) in my area of London has a screen and a camera, it projects locally personalised ads for, among other things, a popular lager beer saying it's available at a bar 30-100m away. I assume they're all networked - and gathering literally all of the above.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info [0], to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in.

The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone.

"L'entreprise insiste cependant sur le fait que les consommateurs doivent donner leur autorisation pour permettre à Radar d'utiliser leurs données de géo-localisation. Cela se fait en général via les conditions générales de certaines applis." which roughly translate as

"The company insists on the fact that consumers have to give their authorization to allow Radar to use geoloc datas. It will be done via CLUF of some apps"

[0] [https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux- publici...](https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux- publicitaires-de-clear-channel-vont-tracer-les-passants-update/article- news-1319057.html)

<comment><USER14> Isn't that explicitly prohibited by the GDPR?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, IANAL, but in GDPR if I recall Well, you have to list all the subcontractors that will have access to personal data. If they are listed and the user accept it in the middle of the 40 pages licence they are opting in.

Again, not a lawyer, but that's how I interpret it. And there's a good chance they have good ones to prevent mistakes.

<comment><USER15> I'm not a lawyer, but I am my small company's DPO, and I think you've misunderstood.

The GDPR specifies six ways you can legally process personal data. Consent is one of them. It must be explicit _for each usage_ , in plain language, opt-in, and non-coerced. Non-coerced means you can't require consent as a condition of access.

So, no, consent buried in a 40-page T&C would not count.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you must be right. I assumed it was what I wrote because the CEO said it was how they gonna get consent.

Maybe missing details

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember something like this in the movie Minority Report (2002).

<comment><USER17> Funnily enough so must have Kim Lyons, the author of this piece, because five paragraphs in we have:

"Remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is on the lam, but the billboards know what he likes?

[Embedded YouTube video: Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future]

We're not quite there yet; the Radar-enabled billboards aren't making spoken sales pitches directly to customers. […]"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does a billboard know which phones are passing it? Do smartphones just randomly connect with nearby devices? Even if wifi and Bluetooth are off?

</comment><comment><USER19> People. They will track people, not consumers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Am I the only one who is reminded of 2002's "Minority Report" here?!

That was supposed to be a dystopia, not an instruction.

</comment><comment><USER21> How is this company not dead yet?? Weren't they delisted from the NYSE?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is awful. Where is my GDPR opt-out screen?

<comment><USER23> This probably doesn't collect GDPR protected data. If the billboard aggregates the data to say that 30% of the people that passed by have an iPhone and the other 70% have an Android phone then GDPR won't come into play here. Or that 40% of the people that went past the billboard are between the ages of 40 and 60 and so on.

<comment><USER24> But what if you added facial recognition (for walkers) and license plate readers (for drivers). Now you know exactly (assuming you have a good DB and the recognition was perfect which is not the case today) who saw the billboard. Now that's creepy.

<comment><USER25> Well, yes, but then they would run afoul of the GDPR, which may prevent this from happening in the first place. But it can't prevent them collecting aggregate stats.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Subscription pricing or one-off pricing  - <AUTHOR>

I am thinking of adding payment to my new service. I want to know what the difference is between subscription and one-off payment. My service is a survey website which would likely not be used every month so i was thinking of using a one-time payment with the full features for a limited number of days. what are the disadvantages? <comment><USER2> Why are you giving potential customers an excuse not to use it every month? Are you basing this assumption on any real data? An obvious disadvantage is it could drastically reduce your revenue - Someone paying $10/month will remember to use our service regularly. Someone paying $10 for a one time use may find it expensive and even if they do not, may decide to go with a competitor the next time they need a survey.

Wufoo is in a similar business for the most part and are doing well with subscriptions.

</comment><comment><USER3> In general, subscription services are great for things you'll need "once in a while". If you can get them on the hook for a low amount, it can be a great source of steady cash because they often won't take the time to cancel until way later.</comment>


Your anonymous posts to Secret aren't anonymous after all - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/secret/?mbid=social_twitter

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8211747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8211747) (135 points, 2 days ago, 93 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I missed this. I'm surprised it wasn't flagged as a duplicate.</comment></comment>


Prisoner's Dilemma situation in reality show 'The Bachelor Pad' - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/the-prisoners-dilemma-makes-a-reality-tv-appearance/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FreakonomicsBlog+(Freakonomics+Blog)

<comment><USER2> So if you picked "keep" you have a chance at an extra $125,000. But you also look like a selfish bastard on national TV, you'll probably lose a lot of friends, and whatever relationship you had going with your housemate (I assume there was something, I didn't watch the show) is now gone. I think those outweigh the extra hundred-odd grand.

The moral of the story is that ongoing relationships can break the prisoner's dilemma. This could be anything from an emotional relationship to a business contract to mere public scrutiny. The prisoner's dilemma is really only a dilemma if it is a true one-shot game, or if the monetary amounts are enough to overcome these other factors.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to simulate the prisoner's dilemma through AI agents and see if they develop a sense of trust over time. Maybe they would adopt a cooperative strategy eventually.

Edit: This paper seems to go in that direction [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.43....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.43.8408&rep=rep1&type=p)

<comment><USER4> There is an iterated version of the prisoner's dilemma and you don't need a clever AI to win. The name of the strategy is tit for tat and it basically wins over the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The prisoner dilemma makes for good television, it's as simple as that. See also: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Uos2fzIJ0&NR=1&feat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Uos2fzIJ0&NR=1&feature=fvwp) — <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9VpKrwz9wU#t=2m37s>

(Those all aren't 'perfect' prisoners dilemmas, i.e. exactly like the gedankenexperiment because things like reputation can come into play or because the players can communicate.)

</comment><comment><USER6> To save you from having to watch the video, both contestants picked "Share", so they split the $250K equally.

<comment><USER5> Argh! Why would you write a comment like that?

Providing short summaries for those who don't want to watch long videos is certainly laudable but the interesting information in this case would be the exact rules or other details of this format (which the original submission certainly doesn't provide) but certainly not the specific decisions made by the contestants. That's irrelevant information in the context of the submission and at the same time you manage to spoil it for all those who actually want to watch the whole video.

I'm sorry, but I have to downvote your comment, if only to hide it.

<comment><USER7> Personally I came here looking for that exact comment. I didn't want to watch 10 minutes of the show to find out. I see your point, and "SPOILER" would have been appropriate, but it was a helpful comment to me.

<comment><USER8> Just move the player position to the end to the see the result instead of waiting 10 mins.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Give People Erections, You're the Devil. Give People Cancer, You're a Hero - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TheKeithCarlson/give-people-erections-theyll-call-you-a-devil-give-people-cancer-they-ll-build-you-a-statue-7b6e50a0837d#.7rwuyk2we <comment><USER2> The Coca Cola company has done much worse things than marginally increase some cancer risks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say that payday loans are significantly worse than porn or legal cannabis.

But do people really buy cannabis from spam messages in places where it's legal?

</comment><comment><USER4> Waiting on interesting read on Coca-Cola giving cancer...

<comment><USER5> _Some_ cola _potentially_ , and Coca-Cola isn't the worst offender in their sample: [http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/02/19/soda-caramel-coloring- cancer/](http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/02/19/soda-caramel-coloring-cancer/) (reached by clicking the link in the article)

<comment><USER4> Here's a link with figures: [http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/01/caramel- colo...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/01/caramel-color-the- health-risk-that-may-be-in-your-soda/index.htm)</comment></comment></comment>


Do you know any community of enthusiastic people, visibly driven by their ideas? - <AUTHOR> I got to discuss this with a couple of friends that share that kid-like type of enthusiasm when they pop ideas that they really find of great value (even if it's not necessarily the case) if implemented. They share that kind of drive in life that makes you leave out no aspect of life (self improvement - be it health, career, etc., helping others, and so on).
We all agreed that most of the time it is great to at least be able to talk with people that share similar enthusiasm and vision/perspectives. It is always a great boost in terms of motivation and not only. It can also lead to forming teams and pursuing one's idea.
Therefore, once again, my question is: Do you know any kind of community, with people that radiate such drive/positiveness? People that do things with passion and drive, and that are pleased to meet others with the same spirit?
PS: Don't get me wrong, most of the people have such moments of drive and enthusiasm, just that for most, the frequency of the ups and downs (the sinusoidal of life) is too high, as they react to negative results/feedback/factors as much easy as they react to positive ones. There are the few others that keep up most of the time.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> The music community. This may not be what you're looking for, your question leaves the type of idea open. Not the music community of the internet, which is mediocre at best, but of actual professional and semi-pro players.

Musicians are driven, obsessed with subtlety and novel ideas, and highly opinionated. This results in intense and vibrant conversation. The community lacks the BS that plagues tech as it's apparent from a few minutes of playing whether someone is worth their salt.

Critique is built into the fabric of musical training. All professional musicians I know take and give constructive criticism in rehearsal and casual settings.

<comment><USER3> Yup a lot of musicians are like this - some just don't have the commercial acumen to understand what they need to do to be financially successful (which isn't really easy and is to some extent fashionable.)

When I moved to Melbourne I started attending local indie shows and now over 90% of my friends here are musicians. All it takes to start a conversation is go up to someone after a gig you enjoyed and ask if you can buy them a beer.

</comment></comment><comment> jonathan-kosgei [https://wip.chat](https://wip.chat)</comment>


London Vue.js #2 (Live Q&A with Evan You and Vue: Simple and Great) - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/London-Vue-js-Meetup/events/229339325/ <comment><AUTHOR> Talk #1 - Vue.js: A simple and great choice.

Vue.js is a simple and great choice for many reasons. This talk will cover the core features, lifecycles, reactivity and more. Helping you to get started or to gain deeper insight into Vue.js' inner workings.

\- By Blake Newman @blakenewman

\- - - - - - - -

Talk #2 - Live Q&A with Evan You

We'll be 'virtually' blessed by the presence of the creator of @Vuejs, Evan You. He'll be giving us a live Q&A session on the big screen via Skype.

\- By Evan You @youyuxi</comment>


Show HN: Product Chase, top weekly and monthly products from Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> http://productchaseapp.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> If you must include the Techcrunch icon (even when the product hasn't been featured in Techcrunch?) it might be best to direct the clickthrough to a Google site-search rather than a general Bing keyword search.

So, for example, the Techcrunch icon under RocketClub could direct to: [https://www.google.co.uk/#q=site:techcrunch.com+RocketClub](https://www.google.co.uk/#q=site:techcrunch.com+RocketClub)

However, given the fact that only a very small number of products featured on Product Hunt will be covered by Techcrunch, but may be covered by other publications/blogs, it might be better to link directly to a Google News search? For example: [https://www.google.co.uk/#q=RocketClub&tbm=nws](https://www.google.co.uk/#q=RocketClub&tbm=nws)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's so sweet! Honestly I put it there a long time ago, when I didn't know that most products there are 'toy-quality', so I thought most of them would be covered in Tech News, which now turn out to be wrong. I definitely change it to google news search. Thanks a lot!

<comment><USER2> No problem, happy to help :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you find checking Product Hunt everday is a bit of time-consuming, then you can try Product Chase, in which I re-arrange their products in a weekly/monthly manner. May be helpful for someone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Adding more filter/sorting options would be great if you want it to become a interface to the producthunt archive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, could you be more specific? Any example?</comment></comment>


High Sierra unusable on older Macbooks: Don't update - <AUTHOR> http://www.openradar.me/35122177 <comment><USER2> This is just a random guy with complaints about High Sierra. I assume he could've put back Sierra with a backup.</comment>


Metajs: visualize Javascript AST execution - <AUTHOR> http://int3.github.io/metajs/

<comment><AUTHOR> Click on "Auto Step" to see the code execute step-by-step as the interpreter walks the AST :)

I hope metajs will be useful for building a mental model of how code really gets executed, especially with complicated control flow (like the Y-combinator example).

Source is on [GitHub][1]; it's written in node + IcedCoffeeScript, and uses browserify.

[1]: <https://github.com/int3/metajs></comment>


A Visual Guide to Version Control - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-version-control/

<comment><AUTHOR> And as a follow up distributed version control [http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed- ver...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed-version- control-illustrated/)

</comment><comment><USER2> As a primary visual thinker, I cannot express my gratefulness enough. This is just the best visual explanation I have seen. Concepts intuitively stick now, after 10 years of struggling with version control.

I have read so many books/guides/etc to grasp VC to try to achieve the level of understanding to the point where one would wake me up, and get a thorough explanation of VC. I have never been closer to intrinsically understand what's going on.

Awesome!</comment>


Slow Life – Amazing Microphotography of Coral Reef made with 150000 shots - <AUTHOR> http://nuttyrepublic.com/amazing-photomicrographs-coral-reef-will-absolutely-mesmerise-forever/

<comment><AUTHOR> The Photographer, Daniel Stoupin took 150000 shots to make this little clip. Why so many?

Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures.

</comment><comment><USER2> Do you have any gigapixel panoramas that you'd like to share? I work at a visualization lab with a 328 megapixel display. These images would be breathtaking on it.</comment>


The bumpy road towards iPhone 5c NAND mirroring - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04327 <comment><USER2> Probably useful to mention this in the comments here: this works for the 5c, but not the 6 and beyond, due to the addition of the Secure Enclave.

<comment><USER3> So the secure enclave must have an embedded flash inside the processor that includes the pin code attempt counter -- meaning that writing to the external flash would not happen at all right?

<comment><USER4> From what Apple's released on how iPhone security works [1], it sounds like such keys are still written to external flash, just in a much more low-level way. So there may be a theoretical way to do this attack on a more recent iphone, but you'd have to do a lot more reverse engineering to figure out a few layers of undocumented proprietary protocols.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The basic issue with using an external memory is that you simply become a man in the middle and control what is happening the whole way. There is not some sort of magic "more low level way" available on flash ICs.. The flash device on any apple device can be fully emulated either by an FPGA or a special high speed setup that still has the flash IC attached to it. When the magic command comes in to write the value to store how many attempts have occurred you respond as if the value was written correctly but then don't actually write it. Assuming the block of memory that is being written is encoded with a particular checksum that is also including some checksum that was calculated on the local copy inside the secure enclave then the main problem we would run into would be that the secure enclave may store some value like that checksum in its memory locally in flash. So when you go to attempt the next passcode it reads the previous checksum from the external nand flash IC and sees that you are using the correct checksum, but the value you stored for the attempt counter does not sum up properly. So basically you would also need to reverse engineer their checksum process to screw up some other value to make the checksum add up properly. The alternative as I suggested is to just store the actual attempt counter in the internal flash of the main A8 or whatever processor in the secure enclave. That way it forces the hacker to have to be a much more sophisticated user and take more risk to damage the chip to basically completely remove the chip, FIB it to cut down to the proper layer-- if apple was smart they would bury the flash for the secure enclave under a bunch of important metal routing that would be super difficult to get around, then even a super sophisticated nation state actor would be highly challenged to do this modification.. Desoldering the flash IC and soldering in an interposer that has an FPC that connects to an FPGA that is purpose built for this setup could be done in like 30 mins or less. So if apple wants to make this scheme difficult to do, they should embed it deep inside the main processor and not rely upon the external flash at all.

<comment><USER5> Great description. You remind me of Joe Grand (L0pht Heavy Industries), Joe FitzPatrick (NSAPlayset), Hector Martin (fail0verflow) and Micah Scott (scanlime). All are brilliant Electric Engineers with a security background. Do you have an EE degree too? Anyways, thanks for the detailed explanation. :)

<comment><USER3> Ha thanks--quite a nice set of compliments there! Yea, you figured me out, I'm an EE who grew up as a wannabe hacker.. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome that someone actually took the time to do what many engineers suggested could be done.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11199275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11199275)

</comment><comment><USER8> Vindicated.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11199093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11199093)

<comment><USER9> No one with the slightest technical background thought the phone was uncrackable, maybe not directly by the FBI but by pretty much any 3rd party contractor that does even basic flash data recovery. The FBI was looking to set a precedent in order to be able to gain easy access to phones that could be also used by law enforcement, a local sheriff's department is less likely to be able to contract it out for every case and even if it would be a commodity it would be price prohibitive at scale. Overall probably even iPhones with a secure enclave are not "immune" to physical attacks, not as easy as doing simple nand-mirroring but if can decap the main CPU without destroying it you should be able to directly probe the secure enclave logic.

Also while NAND mirroring does work, there is a good chance it wasn't used in that case, the current "theory" is that one of the patched USB DMA exploits were used to unlock the phone, NAND mirroring was too "risky" for the FBI to consider at the time, and it wasn't forensically secure IIRC one of the reasons for the very high price was the non-physical attack approach that the 3rd party provider they've selected had in their toolkit.

<comment><USER10> Can you explain how the "USB DMA exploit" works? Also how would you run this exploit on the phone if you were locked out of it?

<comment><USER9> Like any other DMA exploit through the USB host or any other DMA enabled data connector/port.

Cellebrite has a few of them I know of a few for MediaTek chipsets that work through the USB host and the camera connector.

This isn't any different than the DMA "skeleton keys" for PCs and Macs that work via firewire/thunderbolt/pcie/expresscard/PCMCIA etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how much the entire rig cost him? Not $1 million, that's for sure!

<comment><USER12> < $50 in parts (just a PIC24)

<comment><USER13> It would have cost the agencies a lot more though (contracting fees), I highly doubt they'd have the technical capabilities to handle this. But it just goes to show that they didn't really _reach out_ and were simply using it as a means to push their backdoor agenda. :(

<comment><USER14> What worse is that they (or at least Comey) explicitly said that NAND mirroring does not work. When he was testifying before Congress, we was asked by several Congress people about NAND mirroring and (if I remember correctly) said that the technical experts had looked into it. This is either gross incompetence or outright perjury.

<comment><USER9> Well for the FBI NAND mirroring might not be a solution.

In the article the author mentions that this technique can effectively damage the flash memory because you can get effectively into a state where you are causing wear due to writes.

In theory you can scale this up and copy the contents of memory into an FPGA which emulates NAND (both logically and physically) or just hold multiple copies on different chips but even the initial process is not without risk.

While it's easy to say that the FBI lied or was incompetent because they had a motive to say set a precedent, but given the FBI's own rules for what is a forensically accepted method of extracting data NAND mirroring can easily be considered as something that "doesn't work".

<comment><USER14> Perhaps the FBI had a valid reason for not doing NAND mirror [0]. However, I maintain that it is incompetent for the FBI director to testify before congress on the case and not be prepared with a basic answer to why the most obvious technical answer would not work. Similarly, with him saying in a press conference that it would not work.

Of course, the FBI director does not need to know this level of detail about every case, but given how much he appears to have known, he should not have been speaking about the case beyond directing people to ask the person in charge of the case.

[0] Although, I would argue, in cases where no alternative exists, if the FBI policies prevent NAND mirroring, they should be revisited. Even if it has the potential to be destructive, they would only be destroying otherwise unusable information.

<comment><USER9> [0] Although, I would argue, in cases where no alternative exists, if the FBI policies prevent NAND mirroring, they should be revisited. Even if it has the potential to be destructive, they would only be destroying otherwise unusable information.

Eh? no, destructive methods are a big no-no, this isn't a dichotomy.

The information ins't unusable, they can try force apple to unlock the phone, or wait until some one else comes that can do it without using a destructive method.

You can't destroy evidence because you can't do anything with it at the given time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting read

</comment><comment><USER16> A note -- if you're linking to arXiv, it's better to link to the abstract ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04327](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04327)) rather than directly to the PDF. From the abstract, one can easily click through to the PDF; not so the reverse. And the abstract allows one to do things like see different versions of the paper, search for other things by the same authors, etc. Thank you!

<comment><USER8> You can also see when the paper was submitted.

<comment><USER17> Oh I find it so aggravating when I don't have a date. It seems like most academic papers I found on interesting security and programming stuff didn't have dates. I had to pull them off Citeseerx or the school's site. You'd think it would be a requirement in the style guides given importance of when something was published for relevance or context. I've never heard an explanation for why this isn't so.

I do appreciate the authors that put one on there, though. Saves much Googling. :)

<comment><USER18> Conference papers include a copyright notice with the name (and year) of the conference.

Papers that aren't published at conferences (preprints, technical reports... etc) don't have any standard format for this. Sometimes (especially for preprints) it's left out in expectation of adding the copyright notice in a future version, sometimes it's left out because the document is in a very preliminary stage and hasn't been officially published and sometimes it's left out because people just didn't think of it and there's no standard format that includes a date for things that aren't published to a specific venue.

<comment><USER8> You don't need a standard format. You just need to put "DRAFT - [today's date]" somewhere in the document.

<comment><USER17> Im not saying it has to be done a certain way. Im saying my college required the paper to have margins, a title, etc. Im surprised most of them dont require a date of any kind on the document sonewhere. They could write the year in Size 8 in upper-right corner in light grey and that would be better than many in my collection. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Encryption Security May Not Be Secure Anymore (Possible AES Crack) - <AUTHOR> http://yournewswire.com/encryption-security-may-not-be-secure-anymore/ <comment><USER2> Seems _very_ dubious:

* As one poster mentioned, as far as I know factoring has nothing at all to do with AES.

* Mentions of it have previously been cropping up on conspiracy theory sites: [http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1120355/pg1](http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1120355/pg1)

* Nothing on the University of Toronto's press office page: [http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/](http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/)

* Terms like "Quadratic Curves embodied within numeric sentences such as Fibonacci Sequences, Non-Evenly Divisible Values including PI, Catalan Numbers, Mersenne Primes" set off my crank mathematics alarms pretty badly.

* ACA doesn't seem to have a section for presenting abstracts. Possibly they meant a poster? It can't be a full paper, because acceptance notification for that isn't until July 13th, 2016 ([http://www.mathematik.uni-kassel.de/ACA2016/images/poster.pd...](http://www.mathematik.uni-kassel.de/ACA2016/images/poster.pdf))

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there _any_ source for this that's less dodgy? Is it any different from the known weaknesses in the key derivation for AES-256?

<comment><USER4> * > Is there any source for this that's less dodgy?*

The press-release link doesn't even go to any press release.

<comment><USER5> From the article:

> […] the press release has been removed and they are not responding when > asked if they still plan to release the source code and take the abstract of > their final paper to the conference in Kassel, Germany.

Edit: That does not mean that this story is not complete horseshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "press release" links to here: [http://www.mathematik.uni- kassel.de/ACA2016/](http://www.mathematik.uni-kassel.de/ACA2016/) which is definitely not the University of Toronto's Math or CS department page.

<comment><USER7> The link is to a conference in Germany, which apparently does not have all sessions on its website yet. A conference in Germany is mentioned in the alleged press release. On the other hand, University of Toronto does not mention this on its press page (yet?): [https://www.utoronto.ca/news](https://www.utoronto.ca/news)

Might be fake, but I guess the question is when, not if, this will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Setting aside if this is true or not (and my gut feeling is that it is not), given the widespread impact of an AES or RSA crack what should one do with such knowledge? It seems irresponsible to just publish it and let the chips fall. On the other hand if you've spent your entire career in the field such a breakthrough would be the ultimate achievement and would expand your career opportunities a thousandfold and it would be very difficult to keep it to yourself or a handful of colleagues sworn to secrecy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Way too vague. It talks about the output of the AES block algorithm being definitively non-random for certain inputs but then talks about factoring integers which has nothing to do with symmetric transforms.

I'd (obviously) question their code, the implementations of their algorithms, etc. instead. Also, no university I know publishes results like this instead of in a respectable journal. If you really wanted to be fancy, you'd call a press conference, not some dodgy PR news service.

</comment><comment><USER10> Integer factoring has nothing to do with AES Crack. Are they talking about RSA?

</comment><comment><USER11> Here are all UofT press releases: [http://media.utoronto.ca/media- releases/](http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/)

Note that this is nowhere to be seen.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can anybody confirm this?</comment>